January 30, 2019
Since we had reserved two nights in Upper Hutt, our itinerary was to make a day trip south to Cape Palliser (1 hour 20 minutes estimated drive time each way). We had another nice weather day: partly cloudy. We started the day a little later than usual since we wanted to avoid the morning rush hour for our drive. After getting gas for the car, we drove up to the Remutaka Summit. This road was billed as the third worst road in New Zealand for motorcycle fatalities. It was steep and twisty to the summit, but it was a good wide road and I thought much easier to drive than some of the roads in Coromandel. We stopped at the summit and took a short walk to take pictures of the view.
Afterwards the road descended to the town of Featherston. We found a supermarket and bought some bread, and we also got more cash at an ATM.
We drove south to the coast to visit the Putangirua Pinnacles. We took a 1.5 hour hike up a stream bed to the pinnacles. This was a Lord of the Rings film location (the Dimholt Road). The pinnacles are badlands type formations where the stream has eroded layers of rocks. I thought they were quite interesting and different from anything seen in the states.
We drove on to Cape Palliser. The road followed the coast, and the ocean scenery was quite nice. There were several black sand beaches, mostly deserted. There was a lighthouse at the cape with 253 steps to climb to its base at the top of the hill. I made the climb and had a panoramic view of the coastline at the top. It was very windy up there, so I did not stay long.
About 1 km from the lighthouse was a turnout to a rocky point that contained a fur seal colony. This was our first encounter with seals in New Zealand! There were hundreds of them frolicking in the ocean, diving for food, and sunning themselves on the rocks. There were many seal pups playing. They were so cute!
We returned to the car to start the drive back to Upper Hutt. That’s when the fun began. As soon as I started the car, the Check Engine light came on. We popped the hood, checked the oil and fluid levels, and everything looked okay. There was no temperature gauge in the car, and we thought maybe it got too hot, so we turned off the air conditioning. We had no cell phone reception so we could not call anyone. I started driving slowly and everything seemed okay. After we passed a small town the speed limit increased to 100 km, and that is when we found the problem. The car refused to shift and I had virtually no acceleration.
We decided the only thing we could do was try to drive it slowly to where we could get cell phone reception. At that point Heinrich took over driving since I was having a mini freak out. We had to drive uphill to get away from the coast, and there were portions of the road that were narrow, steep and twisty. Heinrich put the car into first gear (that part of the transmission was still working) and managed to creep uphill at about 10 kmh. He put on the emergency flashers. Amazingly no other car came up behind us. We had to drive about 35 km before we reached a road intersection and had good cell phone reception.
Heinrich pulled the car safely off the road and I called AA road service. It took about an hour for the tow truck to arrive. The driver made a diagnosis that there was nothing he could do to fix it. He said he would tow it back to our hotel in Upper Hutt. I called the rental car company office in Wellington and made arrangements for them to deliver a replacement vehicle the following day at 9 AM.
It took about 2 hours to get back to the hotel. At least I did not have to drive the Remutaka Summit road a second time but got to experience the views from the inside of a New Zealand tow truck! At the hotel I contacted the front desk and let them know the situation since we may not make the 10 AM checkout time. They were very understanding. My main concern was to get the replacement vehicle in time for us to get to the ferry the next day for our required check in time of 12:30.
So we were stranded for that evening without a car. Fortunately we had previously bought food for dinner and we had made no other plans for that evening other than to relax. We fixed spaghetti and salad for dinner.
